market folly

Bill Ackman's hedge fund firm Pershing Square Capital Management looks as though they're taking a stake in Procter & Gamble (PG).  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared Pershing to take a stake in the company via this page on their site.

There's no way to know how big Pershing's investment is/will be.  We'll have to wait until SEC filings for clarification.  However, this would be a new stake for the firm.  In Pershing Square's Q1 letter, Ackman said that they had identified their latest investment but declined to name it at the time.  It seems as though PG is the mystery candidate.

The logical play here given Ackman's style would be to break-up the company, but with no formal plans announced we'll have to wait and see.  Ackman already has activist investments in Canadian Pacific (CP) and J.C. Penney (JCP) so it will be interesting to see how many corporate campaigns he can take on at once.

Per Google Finance, Procter & Gamble is "focused on providing consumer packaged goods. The Company’s products are sold in more than 180 countries primarily through mass merchandisers, grocery stores, membership club stores, drug stores and high-frequency stores, the neighborhood stores, which serve many consumers in developing markets."

For more on this manager, we just yesterday posted Bill Ackman's recommended reading list.